Missing employees on Migration

Cheryl Medley

I have just been contacted by an employee who has tried to submit her tax return only to be told by ATO that her employer (my client) is not tax ready.

On investigation, she and one other employee were finished their employment just before I changed from Reckon Payroll Premier to Reckon Payroll, so they wouldn't have been taken with the migration from one to the other. The changeover was early November and these ladies finished working in September. They would have been included in the reports to STP1 though.

How do I go about fixing this? I have finalised all for the client as they are doing their own payroll from 1st July. (Fingers crossed it's not too complicated!)

Rav

Hi @Cheryl Medley

Did you complete an EOFY finalisation in Payroll Premier prior to your migration?

I know that sounds a tad strange and its a bit of a long-winded explanation but I'll try to add some context; employees who were previously terminated in Payroll Premier were not migrated to Reckon Payroll. This should have been advised when your migration was being carried out and there's info on this in our migration article HERE.

Moving forward, there's a couple of separate options;

1️⃣

Contact the ATO and see if they can finalise those terminated employees since your previous software (Payroll Premier) is now no longer available.

2️⃣

If the above isn't possible then the second option is a little more involved depending on how many terminated employees there are. That is to recreate these terminated employees in Reckon Payroll with the EXACT details from Payroll Premier eg. TFN, employee number, name etc and enter their balances as an initial YTD in Reckon Payroll. Terminate them in Reckon Payroll and complete the EOFY finalisation within Reckon Payroll.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: You need to take extra care to ensure the employee details are exactly as listed in Payroll Premier, particularly with TFN, employee names and employee numbers to avoid a duplicate income statement being generated on the ATO end.

I know that's a fair bit of info so if you have any questions let me know.

Cheryl Medley

Thank you, Rav. I can understand it all, and I'm hoping the ex-client or I can convince the ATO to do the work. There are only 2 employees as it turns out. Phew! Otherwise I can do option 2. I will need to shut my doors to do so, but I think I can make it work. It'll just take a bit of time - in the middle of BAS's! Cheers.